July 10, 2006

Are you watching this Frisch/Goldstein thing? Must we all stop and rubberneck at every bloody blogging collision? I mean, I truly enjoyed rubbernecking at this one. There's some nasty stuff out there, and it tends to propagate. Some folks -- notably Goldstein -- have control over the nasty. Others get a taste of the stuff and don't know where to stop.

102 comments:

I hate myself for having done it, but I also spent an inordinate amount of weekend reading commentary from and about this thing. You're right, Ann, it's ghoulish--can't look away. I even downloaded Deb Frish's picture, zoomed it up to lifesize, ran screaming from the computer a few times, but then managed to sneak back and stare, and wonder what the hell is going on out there.

I happened to be participating on the thread at the time of Frisch's original comments, so I guess you call that a vested interest in wanting to follow the story out to conclusion. I found her comments very disturbing on many levels, but mostly because of the anti-semitism they espouse. The idea that someone this far gone would be in a teaching position is scary. I certainly wouldn't want her having influence over my kids.

This one caught my attention more than most for some reason. I guess maybe it busted out of the typical norms for troll behavior. The concurrent DOS on Protein Wisdom added an unusual element to the discussion of what had been and had not been said.

Squiggler, what arrested me was the references to JonBenet Ramsey. That to me put the threats into a different dimension than a mere loss of temper. How many of these people are PhDs working at the National Science Foundation, and teaching at major universities? This woman is National Socialist material. the left keeps worrying about Nazis--hell, maybe the right ought to start worrying about Nazis.

I had too much time on my hands Sunday watching the final World Cup match with my wife and one of my daughters, a former high school soccer star.

Between the two scores, the head butt and the penalty kicks, I followed this saga.

Two observations:

Ms. Frisch is a very unhappy, emotionally disturbed woman who clearly loves the attracting the attention somthing like this draws. The evidence for this conclusion comes not just from her activities on Protein Wisdom, but also from her own extensive blog which is almost a classic cry for help.

Ms. Frisch's activities since the incident further demonstrate the extent of her behavioral problems.Patterico and his commenters have a pretty good blow by blow of these hijinx.

I think your post is too kind to Frisch, Ann. It isn't just another blog collision.It goes beyond nasty blogging, into a place so distasteful and gross that every blogger and blog reader should decry it. The woman is sick.

In the last 2-3 years, Instapundit or someone has linked to Jeff goldstein a couple of times, and recently his "Interview wit Zarqawi" (after Zarqawi was, um, dead) was quite funny.

But somehow I never bookmarked him.

If he was nasty to people, I never saw it. I've always thought of him as vaguely in the neighborhood of Scrappleface.

The comments seemed to form a clique, but isn't that the norm?

The words used by Deborah Frisch really struck me as frighteningly obscene. I don't find mentally ill stalkers innocuous in the least, having been around an ugly case which only came to a conclusion with the stalker's suicide.

And yeah, sure, Frisch reminded me to some extent of quxxo/jacques cuze, who is really quite creepy -- especially once one has seen his "anti-Ann" website. I trust she has taken some precautions. These people are not always all talk.

Maybe some of you don't remember how nastily Jeff Goldstein treated me. I agree Frisch has a big problem. She's the weakling who entered a drinking match with a man who can drink you under the table. She lost control. She paid the price -- a big one. Goldstein's you-talked-about-my-child move is a strong one, but it's a move nonetheless, made by a person who likes to play the game... hard. He's not a victim. He's one of the people who has advanced himself in the blogosphere by making it hostile and ugly. Like all of us, he is capable of being hurt by a genuine crazy. But why not just delete the trolls? Why rile them?Some of them really aren't playing with a full deck. Why push weak people until they lose control? It's an ugly game, and I think Jeff knows he plays it.

But why not just delete the trolls? Why rile them?Some of them really aren't playing with a full deck. Why push weak people until they lose control? It's an ugly game, and I think Jeff knows he plays it.

In this instance, Mr. Goldstein did nothing to rile Frisch. She admitted that she was there to troll and to she had a certain timetable in mind because she wanted to get banned from Protein Wisdom. (I'd say SHE was the one who was trying to play the victim here.) She wanted to make an "example" of the kind of hostility the commenters on Protein Wisdom use to "threaten" others who aren't of the same political persuasian. Well, it backfired on her. She went too far when she made those comments about Mr. Goldstein's son, and that's when the shit hit the fan.

but it's a move nonetheless, made by a person who likes to play the game...

I think you're entirely wrong, and letting your past experience cloud your judgement. In this case, JG did next to nothing - his only major action before the shite hit the fan was telling Deb that he wouldn't ban her for being an obnoxious troll.

Really, you should read the backstory to this, if only to see how absolutely psychotic this woman is. She manages to fit every single stereotype of the "barking leftist moonbat." Conspiracy-obsessed persecution complex, disgust of religion, smug sense of superiority to those not exactly like her, academic isolation, and pure, bile-spewing rage towards anyone who ever said anything nice about Bush.

Rhesa: I haven't made a point by point study of how Deb came unglued. I've gone to the post Jeff identied as the first one, and I see that she made some stupid joke and he, early on said, "We’re pragmatists, Deb. I think if push came to shove, we’d rather just shoot you, then watch a “700 Club” marathon and enjoy some honeybaked ham." So there was two-sided banter with joke death threats.

"Really, you should read the backstory to this, if only to see how absolutely psychotic this woman is."

So should you, and you should read it with the attitude that this is some hapless commentor who has been chosen to have An Example Made Of Her by a very vicious human being who has tasted mean and decided that he likes the taste.

Not that either this interpretation or yours is accurate, precise, or true. But you can spin a situation any way you want, and it's my experience that interpretation typically depends as much on the starting attitudes of the interpreter as it does on the actual facts. Nobody wants to think that their favorite is the villain.

Ann,As a dedicated reader both to your blog and Jeff's (and having come to both of your blogs after your confrontation), I feel that similar characteristics attract me to both. You're both smart, quick-witted, with wry takes and funny as heck. To tell the truth, commenting either place frightens me in a oh-crap-I-hope-I-don't-say-anything-too-stupid way. I don't mind. I'm getting an adrenaline rush as I type this.

Deb Frisch is way out of her league intellectually. I happened to be on the site when she started. And must say, kept coming back to see what happened next. She went around the bend of her own volition--no prompting necessary. She also displays an amazing capacity for verbal violence. Most people wouldn't think, let alone write what she did.

I read about your conflict with Goldstein. Perhaps he's not used to meeting his match. If the stiffest mental competition he gets are trolls like Deb, your criticism might sting harder than you would think it might.

I think that's about right. Certainly Glenn Reynolds approach -- that he deliberately toned down his comments as he saw bloggin get more partisan -- is laudable. But I don't see how a particle of blame attaches to Goldstein for the actions of a person who lacks such control.

Just checking some of the Frisch/Goldstein commentary in passing, it strikes me that Frisch's defense, such as it is, falls in the category of that of the mean drunk -- She (Ann Coulter) or he (Jeff Goldstein) drove me do it.

Bloggers and pundits do their work as individuals. A commentator take act like a mob in attacking an opponent, but in the end, how one individual treats another defines the moral situation. Goldstein was a jerk to you. You responded appropriately (principled defense, long memory). That scores no points for Frisch.

I doubt Goldstein lost sleep over anything this Frisch person said. And I know it's been good for his numbers.

Frisch clearly has problems, and threats of violence, even in jest, are unacceptable. But she wasn't serious, everyone knows that. Goldstein's style is combative. He's bound to make borderline personalities rhetorically blow their tops from time to time.

Was her punishment too harsh? I don't care. She is talentless and mean-spirited, and my political enemy. And really, this is the clincher: The focus she placed on the kid. Creepy.

But ultimately a sideshow.

The real story is the outage Goldstein's blog suffered as a result of techno-trickery.

I was hoping this subject wouldn't come up here, if only because of the kinds of comments it attracts. I found the story following Glenn's link, ending up on Frisch's website within a minute of her "white flag" post. I poked around her site a bit, ran across her Stephen Bainbridge correspondence, and found it all way too looney tunes for me.

In situations like this, defenders point to the actions of accusers to justify their own repellent behavior. Frisch's comments were reprehensible. Whatever led to them is irrelevant and does not mitigate the fact that they should never have been made, period.

That does not justify Goldstein's behavior. It seems to me that he thrives on heated disagreements and encourages them to escalate far beyond the norms of civil discourse. When some get too far out of hand, like this one, Goldstein is as surprised as the child who cries to his mother, "But Mommy, she hit me back first!"

Having visited his site a number of times, I know that Goldstein has some interesting things to say. At the same time, he is much too ideologically rigid, personally abusive and intolerant for my taste. The comment Ann posted today about the law blogger conference and "trust" is an apt description of what I look for when selecting blogs, and why I like Althouse. YYMV, of course.

Those who make a habit of playing with fire for thrills eventually get burned.

John(lesser): What part of this passage did you not understand:Frisch's comments were reprehensible. Whatever led to them is irrelevant and does not mitigate the fact that they should never have been made, period.

No one deserves to be physically threatened with physical harm, John. Ever. No one's family deserves to be threatened with physical harm either. Ever. It doesn't matter if the threat is made on the internet, in the mail or in person.

She put down those threats in her own name (you have one mere layer of indirection, you have to click on her "southwestpaw" name to be taken to the web site debfrisch.com). She did not "rhetorically blow [her] top[]". The difference between telling Jeff to get hit by a bus/meteorite/falling piano/etc. and telling Jeff his son should be molested and murdered is not a quantitative one. It cannot be expressed as a matter of degree on the rhetoric-o-meter.

Ann wrote: I've gone to the post Jeff identied as the first one, and I see that she made some stupid joke and he, early on said, "We’re pragmatists, Deb. I think if push came to shove, we’d rather just shoot you, then watch a “700 Club” marathon and enjoy some honeybaked ham." So there was two-sided banter with joke death threats.

She started "it"* by claiming Jeff and his readers were genocidal racists who should commit suicide. A thousand jokey remarks like the one mocking how leftists claim we're dumb hicks who want to shoot them all (and on its face obviously not sincere because the 700 club is about as appealing to Jeff as an ANSWER rally) cannot begin to approach threatening someone's toddler, or describing stuffing saliva down their throat.

* by "it" I meant exchanging jokey death threats, not supremely morbid descriptions of sexual assault on someone's toddler offspring. That there is no equivalence between the two, or even a difference as a matter of scale, should be obvious, but apparently it has to be explained to you and certain of your commenters.

I doubt Goldstein lost sleep over anything this Frisch person said. And I know it's been good for his numbers.

Yeah, Johnny, a DOS attack is a super way to increase your traffic, especially when a lot of other bloggers are writing about what's going on with your blog. Yeah.

I don't care about the way Jeff and Ann have interacted in the past, Frisch was out of line and disgusting. And the real point here is that Jeff's two-year-old son did not deserve the hateful and frightening bile that she spewed about him, regardless of what you think of Jeff.

I reply:Seriously, John, go back to college and try and run that line when you Frish a female faculty member you don't much like with bizarre and threatening e-mail.

And perhaps you could tell us exactly what Jeff Goldstein's infant son did to deserve being dragged into a very disturbed woman's on-line pathology. Sorry, Professor Althouse, I don't really care about your history with Goldstein or whether he's the biggest bastard in creation. There's some places you just don't cross either on-line or in life.

And this is a serious question: If this is how Frish behaved on-line, I shudder to think how she acted out towards her students if they got on her s**t list. It's a pretty level playing field between bloggers and trolls; that is not true in a classroom.

I'm confused. Why are you weighing in on a dispute you haven't followed? Just the other day you were on the radio lamenting the disservice of loony profs who force their students to listen to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Frisch is exactly this sort of loon, quite apart from her vile comments. (The best was "you aren't human to me." It was refreshing to have one of her ilk put that sentiment into words.) The idea of JG saying to someone "you aren't human to me" makes me smile. There's no equivalence there.

p.s. Jeff explicitly conceded that he is not a victim and doesn't feel threatened by her. He's not whining, or even seeiming to express "shock" - she's a dummy and he's throwing her the rope she keeps asking for. Any damage to her reputation is entirely self-inflicted, since she continually announces her identity and PhD when she trolls.

Most of the political blogosphere seems to have morphed into Usenet, albeit with nicer graphics. I'm thinking about not paying attention any more and getting a real life. In the land of make believe, where Kos is King and Freep is a small country... well, I'm not sure that sane people have a place they can call home. If I wanted to scream at somebody about politics and get a null response, it would be easier to shout at this rock I have in my back yard. And besides, the rock would probably never threaten to molest my kid, cost me my job, or any of the other lovely little things that web trolls do. It seems to me that if you have any kind of a responsible life apart from running a website, there is a lot to be lost from participating in this Village Idiot-a-thon, and not much to be gained.

While protein wisdom varies between in-depth analysis and quirky humor, it does at times devolve into a mean-spirited baring of teeth. But it's a pretty obvious style, so you read it or you don't.

His wit and verbal skills make him irresistible, it appears, drawing The Next Great Left Hopefuls by the handful. He can be vicious, and I guess that makes some people want to try and knock him down. Fun? Maybe.

But Frisch's error in judgement lay precisely in choosing a child as her target. Words like weird, sick, creepy, dangerous, and personality disorder come to mind. It was the same wild flailing that certain posters here have engaged in, whose comments cause one to feel sickened, and makes wiser spirits leave.

Among males, mocking anything about them is fair game in such a verbal bar-fight. But family is off-limits. And wishing that a pedophile murders your opponent's son? That such a comment is excused at all is shameful. Do people really dispute this? One shudders at the thought.

I'm not excusing Frisch. I'm just saying that Goldstein has contributed to a style of brutal discourse. I'm not saying he deserves to be physically threated. Please be accurate about what I have said. Frisch is a weak person, and Goldstein was involved in joking banter about violence at the beginning. Then she was allowed to do what she imagined was wild, over-the-top trash talking, and they let her have the rope to hang herself.

As to the "denial of service" attack, how do we know what happened. Goldstein was getting a lot of traffic hosting this exciting show. Is it known that his enemies brought down the site?

I think Frischs' personality is disintegrating. Look at the locutions "told on me" to her department head, "mommy told me to wash my mouth out with soap." She puts herself on time-out. She wants it all to go away once it turns out badly. She's talking of how the fair in Eugene compares to taking your kids to disneyland. The woman is reverting to infantilism. Lots of her commenters have urged her to seek pyschological help (though getting that from other members of her 'profession' is perhaps not very confidence-inducing). I think she's going to end up getting it whether she seeks it or not.

Sorry, Ann. My comment wasn't directed at you or your post, and wasn't intended to suggest you 'excused Frisch'. Rather, I thought the same weird comments had happened to you here, in a blog lacking any tendency toward verbal excess.

Jeez. Sometimes I can't write clearly, and sometimes I can't write at all.

I wasn't aware Goldstein said he'd sooner "shoot" Frisch. Does that not make his entire victim act in this affair rather contrived.

This is, after all, the same guy who's threatened to slap other bloggers with, ahem, certain parts of his anatomy. This is the same guy who's made reference to molesting a bloggers sister. For him to now take on the mantle of victimhood is rich, to say the least.

Ann, I think that by asserting JG has contributed to a style of "brutal discourse" you are in fact excusing Frisch, whatever you think of her remarks. She blames him in the same strange way, saying he could have simply deleted her posts rather than "allowing her" to go off the beam - I find this attitude very odd.

Ann, you come off as an extremely sensitive person who find criticism from others highly offensive. I have read anad re-read the material you provided about Jeff Goldstein and I fail to understand how you could be so angered that you make the 'moral equivalence' between Frisch and Goldstein. Perhaps you need to reflect on how you see issues between the sexes.

Kesher Talk links to previous episodes. Frisch has been angling to become a martyr to her non-cause for a long time indeed. Of course it's sad, and the fact that she is so stunted makes it seem like an unfair fight. But this is her show, all the way.

Ann Althouse wrote:As to the "denial of service" attack, how do we know what happened. Goldstein was getting a lot of traffic hosting this exciting show. Is it known that his enemies brought down the site?

Taking the ironic quotation marks out, anyone who's reasonably tech savvy can tell the difference between a deliberate DOS attack and sudden spikes of traffic. I'm sure you don't mean to imply that Goldstein is a lying drama queen, because I wondered the same thing myself. I'd just be inclined to take him at his word.

And I'll rephrase my eariler question, if you were subjected to this kind of abuse by a student would it be a relevant defence (in your opinion) if the person thought your teaching "contribution to a brutal style of discourse"?

...Frisch has a big problem. She's the weakling who entered a drinking match with a man who can drink you under the table. She lost control. She paid the price -- a big one. ... [Goldstein is] not a victim ... Some of them [the trolls] really aren't playing with a full deck. Why push weak people until they lose control? It's an ugly game, and I think Jeff knows he plays it.

I pretty much agree with this, except I think I have less mercy for trolls. Goldstein is not a victim, but I don't think he's really playing the victim card either. They engaged in a esclating game of verbal chicken, and the experienced Goldstein slammed the brakes at the right time, while Frisch drove off the cliff, to her well-deserved demise.

To me, the "don't goad weak people" argument is dangerously similar to the "understanding, not punishment" stance liberals take for all manners of criminal behavior. Momentary loss of self-control is not an excuse for murder, physical abuse, or drug use, and I see no reason why it should be different in this case.

Besides wondering about her parenting skills (tongue-kissing a two year old?!) and what she's teaching her own children, I'm curious to know why the lady chose to communicate in a mofo, bro, ephing kind of way, almost parodying a black stereotype.

First, the thread Ann identifies as the first in which Deb appears is in fact one of the last. She first appears in this post on July 3 -- a sober post about NYT and SWIFT. There, she begins talking about "kooky kristians" and "Cuntasleeza Rice" and posting her poetry.

Second, Ann, like the Tuscon Citizen, takes the "we're pragmatists" line out of context.

So I'll provide it.

First, here are Dr Frisch's comments in that thread leading up to my quip:

1) "If dem gooks attack Hawaii, I say we should nuke ‘em all! Remember Hiroshima, you slanty-eyed mofos! We will MICROWAVE you mofos if you look at us the wrong way! Bring it on, gooks! Bring it ephing on!"

2) "Please don’t take this the wrong way....but if everyone who lurked in the comments section of this blog drank the kool-aid RIGHT NOW.....the country and the world would be better places. Just my two sense."

To which I replied, "We’re pragmatists, Deb. I think if push came to shove, we’d rather just shoot you, then watch a “700 Club” marathon and enjoy some honeybaked ham."

Not only does this line address the suggestion that we all commit suicide, but it also hearkens back to the whole "kooky kristian" thing she spent a day on earlier.

As someone else pointed out upthread, I don't have much use for the "700 Club," but it's clear that we were being treated as glass cartoon animals in Deb's little unhinged menagerie.

Finally, I haven't whined; but neither did I incite Frisch. In fact, for the most part I ignored her. But when she decided to take it up a notch, I provided her with the rope she needed.

The fact that Frisch was (is?) a professor is the thing that makes her words and actions a bit out of bounds. She should have considered what this might do for her school's reputation, and the reputation of her colleagues.

Certainly Goldstein fears very little from her precisely because of that position at UA, her lack of pure anonymity, and the fact that she is a female (and thus statistically unlikely to truly drive by and kick his family's arses).

I tend to feal that most words, and even a few over the top threats (if obviously over the top) are quite okay for the average person on a blog, but one needs to take greater care depending on one's job, and further, one ought to be ready to accept any consequences that result from the creativity of one's own verbal process.

Jeff: My post is about how I'm not interested in watching the crap that unfolds over there. I'm sure you're happy that more people are reading you, but I'm not going to be one of them. I don't like you. I think you're a prick. Some folks are a bigger pricks than you. Sorry, I have a life.

Now I think Ann only mentioned the dispute to resurrect her own feud with Goldstein. Then she claims not to sully herself with such matters? I'm beginning to think my initial impression of Ann as a glib boomer were right on.

Jeff makes me laugh out loud, which goes a long way. I don't know many truly funny people who are actual pricks, however prickish they may be from time to time. Ann didn't like Santino either - it all makes sense now!

I would like to revise and extend my previous comment. While the first comment on this comment string stated the issue perfectly, the last few sentences of Ann's 7:51pm comment also state certain aspects of the issue quite well.

Sean M said: "Yeah, Johnny, a DOS attack is a super way to increase your traffic, especially when a lot of other bloggers are writing about what's going on with your blog. Yeah."

Of course, during the attack, when his site was down, there would be no traffic. I'm talking afterwards. I know his traffic increased. I haven't been to Protein Wisdom in years, but I was there yesterday. With every blogger in the world talking about this, I know I wasn't the only new visitor.

Well, that got ugly in a hurry. This is what happens when people who don't want to talk about something, talk about it anyway.

The post, though, makes more sense now. Frisch yeilded to a temptation Althouse feels herself. People who don't hate Goldstein, don't understand why those who do, do. They don't feel that itch. Those who do, who can't shake the itch, feel bad for the ones who scratch themselves raw over it.

Goldstein's you-talked-about-my-child move is a strong one, but it's a move nonetheless, made by a person who likes to play the game... hard. He's not a victim. He's one of the people who has advanced himself in the blogosphere by making it hostile and ugly. Like all of us, he is capable of being hurt by a genuine crazy. But why not just delete the trolls? Why rile them?Some of them really aren't playing with a full deck. Why push weak people until they lose control? It's an ugly game, and I think Jeff knows he plays it.8:44 PM, July 10, 2006

Don't you all get it?l

Ann sees him quite clearly.

He's playing a ugly game, and he enjoys playing that game.

Ann has zero interest in participating or watching Jeff play his game.

She isn't my X. I think what she said was crude and a stupid way of objecting to the professor's crudity.

Well, I'll amend that; X said what she said because she's a jerk. There were plenty of ways of making the point she hoped to without making herself a jerk (I hope, for example, that I was able to). But the reason she used exactly the words she did was because they were the mirror image of professor Althouse's.

Just watched the vlog. I liked it; I like you, even if you'd never know it from my sparse posting. I don't want to pollute the comments under that, so I'll post my last thoughts here.

You didn't want to get mired in the quicksand of Jeff's comment section (I almost never mire myself in them, though not because I object to him) but you did want to, and did in deed, post a drive by on it. You know how jealously Jeff guards his name (even if you think that behavior, well, whatever you think of it). He doesn't give out free punches; he defends himself, which, in this case, at least, he did without being nasty to you. You didn't reciprocate.

The whole thing (thought it's very small as things go) wouldn't have happened if you'd ignored the thing you didn't really want to talk about. With the 9/11 kooks, it was a thread-jacking. Here, it was on topic because you posted about something you didn't want to talk about.

I don't mind being called crude, stupid, and a jerk, by the way, since for me they're just meta-attributes that pertain more directly to Professor Althouse. There's something a little strange, even creepy, about her fixation with Pajamas Media in general, Goldstein in particular. Other than that, she's usually interesting, sometimes insightful.

Does anyone really think it's just a coincidence that a thread about Jeff Goldstein turns ugly and obscene? He's continually at the center of this kind of crap. He's a perennial winner of the brown-spoon award. That's what he has to sell, period.

Elizabeth: True. Never has turned out differently before when I've run across similar threads here and elsewhere. The course of events, and the people who post, are pretty predictable, actually. And, of course, someone always makes an appearance to protect his honor or whatever. No matter what the original subject of a post, by the end it is always all about injustices done to the blog proprietor, not the issue.

Andrew: "The whole thing (thought it's very small as things go) wouldn't have happened if you'd ignored the thing you didn't really want to talk about."

But, Andrew, I did exactly what I wanted to do and responded exactly to the degree I wanted to. I have no problem with the comments, including Jeff showing up in the comments. All I'm saying here is that I won't get dragged anywhere I don't want to go. I'm onto Jeff's game and I'm not playing. And if I want to say I'm not playing, it's because I feel like saying that.

Sally: You're real percipient, detecting an obsession that I have with a topic I haven't touched since 2005! But it's damned touching that you want to defend Jeff so bad. Now go back there and quit pretending you're part of the Althouse readership.

I know what you mean, but I'm using a broad brush. Still not sure I agree with you, though. Not sure if that's blaming the victim or not. It reminds me of Zidane's whining about provokers being punished, too.

If a behavior is totally out of bounds, and Frisch's were, then I don't think qualifiers count, or are even appropriate. And giving someone like that enough rope to hang themselves IS appropriate.